The Best Residential Proxy Providers of 2022
Residential proxies can breathe new life into your bot or web scraping software. That’s because they come from real devices, letting you blend into the crowd much better than datacenter IPs. With a residential proxy server, Mr Robot 123 becomes John from Cincinnati, Maria from Lyon, or Rajesh from Delhi.
If you’re looking to buy residential proxies, you’ve come to the right place. This page will introduce you to a variety of great providers. Don’t worry, we’ve extensively tested each and outlined their main characteristics to make your choice easier. Without further ado, here are the best residential proxies for sale in 2022.
Key Points about Rotating Residential Proxies
- Residential proxies borrow IPs from real people: their computers, mobile phones, and other devices on WiFi. They’re often called peer-to-peer proxies.
- This makes them much harder to detect than datacenter IPs.
- They also support more locations and more precise targeting options.
- Residential proxy networks include millions of IPs. However, not all IPs are available at all times because people can simply turn off their devices.
- Most residential IPs are shared and have to rotate after a while. For dedicated addresses, you can look into ISP proxies.
- You usually buy traffic to access the whole proxy network.
To learn more, you can read our guide on residential proxies.
Residential Proxies vs Other Proxy Types
When does it make sense to use residential proxies instead of, say, datacenter IPs? There are three good reasons:
1. Your target has strong protection mechanisms. Sneaker websites, travel fare aggregators, and other sites that encounter bot traffic use IP reputation as the first line of defence. Residential IPs have a good reputation because they’re registered under consumer internet service providers.
2. You need broad location coverage. Residential IPs come from millions of people around the world. So, they support many locations – much more than a data center could. This makes them a good choice for SEO crawling, ad verification, software localization, and similar tasks.
3. You want to browse truly anonymously. VPNs and datacenter addresses hide you but not the fact you’re using them. Residential proxies make it look like you’re browsing as a real person.
You can read our comparison of datacenter and residential proxies to learn more.
How Much Do Residential Proxies Cost?
You’ll be looking at paying anywhere between $1 to $20 per gigabyte. A lot depends on how much you buy and if you commit to a long-term contract. The average for 100 GBs is around $8/GB.
A word about free trials: if you’re not a business, you probably won’t get one. Most providers will offer you a limited money-back guarantee instead. This is the market standard. Its purpose is to protect from abuse.
How We Made This List
To choose the best residential proxy providers, we made them go through extensive tests. The majority of companies on the list participated in this year’s Proxy Market Research. There, we made over 2 million connection requests for each provider over a period of three weeks. We then evaluated every aspect that matters, from performance to customer support and price.
The Best Residential Proxy Providers for 2022
Smartproxy offers great value for anyone that needs backconnect residential proxies. It strikes a rare balance of top-notch performance, affordable pricing, and enough features for most tasks. The user experience is also impeccable. There are many guides, proxy control tools, and award-winning customer support. You can start using Smartproxy with minimal interaction, as it emphasizes self-service.
Smartproxy’s only real drawbacks are no SOCKS5 support and limited targeting options (no carrier or ASN targeting).
Features:
- Proxy pool: 40 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S)
- Locations: 195 with country, state, and city targeting
- Rotation: every request, 10, 30 mins
- Support: award-winning 24/7 support via chat or email
- Extras: API, browser extension, anti-detect browser, extensive documentation
Pricing:
Starts from $75/5 GB ($15/GB). 3-day refund available.
Read the Smartproxy review for more information and performance tests.
Oxylabs sells premium residential proxies for businesses. They cover all countries and most cities in the world, and you can even target them by ASN. The proxies have class-leading performance, are stable and highly scalable. You’ll be getting a dedicated account manager and tips to improve your scraping success.
Oxylabs may not be the best option for beginners or individual use. The pricing is somewhat expensive at first and starts from $300. That said, it scales well as you buy up.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 100 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S)
- Location: Every country, thousands of cities, ASN targeting
- Rotation: every request, sticky sessions up to 30 mins
- Support: 24/7 via live chat, dedicated account manager
- Extras: API, browser extension, extensive documentation
Pricing:
Starts from $300/20 GB ($15/GB). 7-day free trial for businesses, 3-day refund for individuals.
Read the Oxylabs review for more information and performance tests.
Bright Data is the largest proxy provider in the market, with a huge pool of rotating residential IPs around the world. The proxies have many features and even allow targeting by ASN. We’ve found their performance to be great when the provider didn’t impose artificial limits. Bright Data includes powerful proxy control tools, especially its open source proxy manager. You can subscribe to a pricing plan or pay as you go.
Like Oxylabs, Bright Data is mostly concerned with business customers. We wouldn’t recommend it for beginners – the service can be complex to use, and the pricing structure is somewhat confusing. There’s also strict a KYC process which rules out some gray hat use cases.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 72 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S), SOCKS5
- Locations: Every country & city, ASN and carrier targeting
- Rotation: every request with customizable sticky sessions
- Support: 24/7 via live chat, tickets, dedicated account manager
- Extras: API, browser extension, Proxy Manager, extensive documentation
Pricing:
Starts from $300/20GB ($15/GB). 7-day free trial for businesses, 3-day refund for individuals.
Add $250 in credits, mention Proxyway, and Bright Data will match you with another $250.
Grab the OfferRead the Bright Data review for more information and performance tests.
SOAX controls a network of around 8.5 million residential proxies. It stands somewhere in the middle between cheap and premium providers, similarly to Smartproxy. SOAX’s two distinguish features are rotation and location targeting. Both are very flexible: you can choose to keep an IP anywhere from 90 seconds (or less, if you pay extra) to until it becomes unavailable, in multiple increments. Targeting-wise, SOAX lets you specify not only country, but also region, city, and ASN. The proxies aren’t fast but they work impressively well.
Otherwise, SOAX is still pretty raw. This doesn’t detract too much from the service but is noticeable. Some technical choices it’s made also raise questions: HTTP(S) traffic over SOCKS5, obligatory IP whitelisting, and limited ports for plans. All in all, choose this provider for the flexibility, if you need it.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 8.5 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S) over SOCKS5
- Locations: 100+ with country, city, ASN targeting
- Rotation: from 90s to as long as available (with custom options)
- Support: 24/7 via live chat and tickets
- Extras: limited API, node access (connect to an IP directly)
Pricing:
From $75 for 5GB ($15/GB) and 600 ports. 3-day trial for $1.99 available.
Read the SOAX review for more information and performance tests.
NetNut used to be the posterboy of static residential proxies, offering them in bulk to medium and large businesses. Recently, it introduced rotating residential proxies and expanded the pricing plans to include a wider audience. You can get both kinds of IPs with as few as 1 GB of traffic. Bigger clients can opt for request-based plans – but they begin from thousands of dollars. Performance-wise, NetNut did well, but it’s still behind the market leaders, Bright Data and Oxylabs.
NetNut isn’t the easiest provider to use, and it’s still best if you need proxies at scale. The cheaper plans lock features, such as API access or Skype support.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 10 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S)
- Locations: 150+ countries with country targeting
- Rotation: every request or as long as the IP is available
- Support: 24/7 via email, Skype (larger plans)
- Extras: API (for resellers), mediocre documentation
Pricing:
Starts from $20/1 GB ($1/GB). 7-day free trial available.
Read the NetNut review for more information and performance tests.
GeoSurf is one more premium residential proxy provider. What distinguishes it from the others is that it very much focuses on quality over quantity. The 2.5M IPs are handpicked from tier 1 countries and major consumer ISPs. Another strength is extensive location coverage (over 1,000 cities) and multiple rotation settings. Naturally, there’s an API and a browser extension to simplify tasks that require geo-targeting.
On the downside, GeoSurf is among the more expensive providers. The limited proxy pool may mean that you’ll encounter abused IPs more often. And the company recently lost a lawsuit to Bright Data, so its future is uncertain.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 2.5 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S)
- Locations: 100+ countries with 1700+ cities
- Rotation: every request, sticky sessions for 1/10/30 mins
- Support: 24/7 via email or Skype
- Extras: API, browser extension, extensive documentation
Pricing:
Starts from $450/38 GB ($11.85/GB). Demo session available.
Read the GeoSurf review for more information and performance tests.
PacketStream has extremely affordable residential proxies thanks to its unique business model. It buys bandwidth directly from people and then resells it to customers. This lets PacketStream offer IPs for as little as $1/GB with pay-as-you-go pricing.
When we tested the network, the performance was great. But we found much fewer unique IPs than the 7 million number would suggest. As a result, you can quickly start getting duplicate proxies, especially if you select a location somewhere outside of North America or Europe. Still, its price and ease of use make PacketStream a decent option for beginners. Just note that the minimum deposit is $50, despite the low price per GB. Businesses that need a large proxy pool with great customer service should look elsewhere.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 7 million (?) monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S)
- Locations: 150+ with country targeting
- Rotation: every request, sticky sessions for as long as available
- Support: 24/7 via email
- Extras: API for resellers
Pricing:
Starts from $50/50GB ($1/GB). Free trial available.
Read the PacketStream review for more information and performance tests.
Infatica is a relatively new provider that sells peer-to-peer residential proxies for businesses. It tries to compete with the likes of Oxylabs, GeoSurf, and Luminati by offering most of the same features at better prices. In reality, Infatica’s proxy network works pretty well and includes all the basic features. It also scales into hundreds of requests per second without issues.
Pricing aside, Infatica still has ways to go, especially in terms of user experience. The documentation is very barebones, the dashboard uncomfortable, and proxy controls somewhat clunky. But if your company needs a lot of traffic wants to save some money, Infatica can prove a good alternative to the big guys.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 10 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S) over SOCKS5
- Locations: ~100 with country targeting
- Rotation: 1 hour
- Support: 24/7 via tickets and email
Pricing:
Starts from $360/40GB ($9/GB). 7-day free trial available.
Read the Infatica review for more information and performance tests.
IPRoyal offers access to two different residential IP pools: Premium and Royal. The former resells IPs from three other providers: it’s much larger, more feature-rich, but also more expensive. The latter is IPRoyal’s own: small but cleaner and very affordable. The Royal pool performs okay for small-time use, has specialized sneaker endpoints and very generous rotation options: from 1 second up to 24 hours. In any case, you can pay as you go, and your traffic won’t expire.
Overall, IPRoyal makes a strong competitor for PacketStream if you need residential IPs on the cheap.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 10 million (Premium), 25,000 (Royal)
- Protocols: HTTP(S)
- Locations: 150+ with country (Royal) & city (Premium) targeting
- Rotation: every request to 24 hours
- Support: 24/7 via live chat
Pricing:
Starts from $3 for 1 GB.
Read the IPRoyal review for more information and performance tests.
Storm Proxies sells rotating residential proxies in the US and EU. Its main strengths are affordable pricing, instant setup, and unlimited bandwidth. On the other hand, the provider has very narrow location coverage, fewer features, and doesn’t scale well. The performance is mediocre at best, at least when we tried it.
Overall, Storm Proxies is a good beginner’s choice if you’re working with unprotected websites and don’t want to worry about bandwidth limits. You shouldn’t use it for demanding or location-sensitive tasks.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 40,000 IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S)
- Locations: US and EU, no country targeting
- Rotation: every 3 or 5 minutes
- Support: 24/7 via email
Pricing:
Starts from $19/1 port. 24-hour free trial available.
Read the Storm Proxies review for more information and performance tests.
How long does usually residential proxy last, before the IP changes?
It depends on the proxy provider and the end user. Usually, it’s up to 10 or 30 minutes.
Would you recommend to buy a residential proxy for surveys? They’re more expensive than datacenter proxies, but some reviews say that they are better.
Offerman, residential proxies should be a better choice. They hide the fact that you’re using a proxy much better than datacenter IPs. And I’d guess some survey sites are pretty touchy about this subject.
Let’s say I buy a bunch of proxies from a less known provider. How to tell if proxy is residential based? What can be the main way to spot them from data center based proxies?
You can use any IP checker – look for the “ISP” field. If you can’t recognize the company, Google it and see if it’s a commercial provider or one that sells cloud services. Or you can use an IP database like IP2Location. We write more about testing proxies here: https://proxyway.com/guides/how-to-test-proxies
You should try review https://speedproxies.net/ as I tried them for the last few weeks and worked quite good, with the downside being that they don’t support socks5.
Hi Rhys, thanks for the suggestion. We’ll have a look at them.
That’s a very great and detailed overview! From my personal experience, I see Smartproxy as the best solution when choosing residential proxies, especially for SEO tasks since they have those specific Search Engine proxies (https://smartproxy.com/proxies/search-engine-proxies).
Also, there is a great ratio between the price and what you get for it (lots of features), so probably it’s no surprise that this provider is ranked the highest on this list.
For me Smartproxy have the fastest residential proxies I’ve tried. Pretty impressive work with bots. I’m not a pro in copping sneakers and I’ve only tried the whole procedure for personal usage, but I was satisfied.
Good choose, fast delivery time, average prices. All this words about this service. I am a customer of this service 1.5 years, like it
didn’t expect smartproxy to have the fastest residential proxies since their prices are pretty low. is the speed impacted more by the IP / country or the proxy provider?
It’s impacted by many factors: the IP source’s connection speed and location, as well as the location of the provider’s load balancing server and the target website.
can you use residential proxies anywhere? and i mean anywhere, like China or even North Korea? no intentions to do any business there, i’m just curious to see how ultra restricted internet feels like
China yes (though not all providers can offer that), not sure about North Korea. Others places – sure.